Category Archives: Crazy carbon schemes

I’m grateful to Messenger for pointing me to this excerpt from the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s Facing up to Climate Change report. This is the winning entry for the schools’ climate change poster competition, held as part of the project. Why such a competition would be felt necessary by a learned society is beyond me, but here, such as it is, is what the combined eminences of the society felt we need to be doing to face up to climate change…

Over some environmentalists’ objections, the state Supreme Court voted Wednesday to let California air-quality regulators go ahead with a market-oriented cap-and-trade system of pollution credits to combat global warming while appealing a judge’s order to look harder at alternatives.

The order came in a case that has divided mainstream environmental groups, which support cap and trade, and antipoverty “environmental justice” organizations, which argue that the market approach exposes poor and minority communities to more pollution. (SF Chronicle)

The Environmental Protection Agency called a Daily Caller report “comically wrong” this morning. That is an interesting analysis given that the EPA’s hideously bad global warming regulations are more of a joke than actual regulatory structure. Either way, the fun and games will soon end when Americans are paying higher energy prices and businesses are shedding jobs as a result of these “comically wrong” regulations. (The Foundry)

In response to a report that could lead to questions about the credibility of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) , Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is calling for hearings to investigate. The report — from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the EPA — reveals that the scientific basis, on which the administration’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases hinged, violated the EPA’s own peer review procedure. (Daily Caller)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2011 — New technology that combines production of electricity with capture of carbon dioxide could make billions of barrels of oil shale — now regarded as off-limits because of the huge amounts of carbon dioxide released in its production — available as an energy source. That’s the topic of the latest episode in the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) award-winning “Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions” podcast series.

Industrial Policy: Unable to sell its electric cars here, Government Motors plans to partner with the Chinese and possibly give away its taxpayer-funded technology. The administration’s industrial policy picks another loser.

Here we thought the purpose of President Obama’s green jobs and green energy policies was to embrace the technologies and energy sources of the future in order to compete with countries like China. Instead, taxpayer dollars may have once again been wasted — this time to provide jobs for and technology to those we should be competing with.

General Motors Corp., whose international headquarters is in Shanghai, has announced it would be developing an electric car platform with its longtime Chinese partner, the Shanghai Automotive Industrial Corporation (SAIC). The question is why. GM would of necessity have to share some of its technology with the Chinese at the same time it was aiding a U.S. competitor. (IBD)

As the world gears up for the next round of United Nations climate-change negotiations in Durban, South Africa, in November, evidence has emerged that a cornerstone of the existing global climate agreement, the international greenhouse-gas emissions-trading system, is seriously flawed.
…
But a diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the CDM projects in India should not have been certified because they did not reduce emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. Indian officials have apparently known about the problem for at least two years.

“What has leaked just confirms our view that in its present form the CDM is basically a farce,” says Eva Filzmoser, programme director of CDM Watch, a Brussels-based watchdog organization. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. “In the face of these comments it is no wonder that the United States has backed away from emission trading,” Filzmoser says.

Inside the EPAMemos show that even other regulators worry about its rule-making.

The Environmental Protection Agency claims that the critics of its campaign to remake U.S. electricity are partisans, but it turns out that they include other regulators and even some in the Obama Administration. In particular, a trove of documents uncovered by Congressional investigators reveals that these internal critics think the EPA is undermining the security and reliability of the U.S. electric power supply.

With its unprecedented wave of rules, the EPA is abusing traditional air-quality laws to force a large share of the coal-fired fleet to shut down. Amid these sacrifices on the anticarbon altar, Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski and several House committees have been asking, well, what happens after as much as 8% of U.S. generating capacity is taken off the grid? (WSJ)

There is an interesting seminar scheduled for September 27 2011. The announcement is reproduced below. Alan Robock and I differ on a number of climate issues, but he and I seem to agree on the risks of geoengineering. Alan told me that his papers on geoengineering can be obtained from http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/robock_geopapers.html

I have highlighted text in the announcement in which he and I agree. His concern on geoengineering, which involves deliberate alterations in regional climate forcings, in addition to any effect on the global average radiative forcing, should also make him a proponent of the important role of land use/land cover change (i.e. a regional climate forcing) as a first-order climate forcing. (Roger Pielke Sr.)

The plastic bags shoppers use to carry their goods home from the store have become an environmental battleground, and statistics are a key weapon in the fight.

Cities around the U.S. have banned or considered banning the bags because of their environmental impact. Manufacturers of the sacks have dueled with environmentalists and makers of reusable bags over carbon footprints. And last week, a maker of reusable bags settled a lawsuit filed by a plastic-bag manufacturer over competing numerical claims on bags’ imprint on the environment.

START with what is uncontested. First, once carbon emitters are issued permits, those permits will be property they own, so any government that abolishes them will have to pay compensation, possibly in the billions of dollars.

Second, entitlements created by statute may be found by the High Court to be property even if that is not specified in the legislation creating them. But specifying it in the legislation, as the government intends, makes that outcome, and the need to pay compensation, far more certain.

The “rich” nations have promised to provide $30 billion by 2012 “to help poorer, vulnerable countries adapt to climate change” and they have pledged to raise that amount to $100 billion a year by 2020.

Fortunately, it is highly unlikely that the “rich” nations will ever raise those sums of money. Still, before the final unraveling of the case for human caused global warming, billions of dollars are likely to be wasted on corruption e.g. in connection with carbon markets (cap and trade), recently described in this way by an expert: “You couldn’t design a better instrument for corruption”: (New Nostradamus of the North)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently conceded that the forecasts prepared by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for the March Budget will be undershot. There will be a new set of forecasts, along with measures to boost growth, in the Autumn Statement (29 November). Growth, or more accurately lack of growth, is rapidly becoming the big economic story along with the inter-related and intensifying crisis in the Eurozone – but more on this another day. Despite the disappointing prospects, the Chancellor reiterated that he would be sticking to his deficit reduction plans, rightly so in my view. (GWPF)

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Crawling culprit seen in urban kids’ asthma Researchers have identified cockroaches as a potential explanation for dramatic variations between neighborhoods in asthma rates among New York City children. In some New York City neighborhoods, 19 percent — nearly 1 in 5 — children have asthma; in others, the rate is as low as 3 percent. […]

Political Payback – Oregon Style Paul Driessen Confused visitors will be forgiven for thinking Oregon State University is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Congressman Pete DeFazio and the “progressive-socialist” wing of the Democratic Party. Or for likening what’s going on there to political retribution as practiced in Third World thugocracies. (Townhall) […]

The European Union’s taxation commissioner plans to propose a new two-part fuel tax, split into a carbon tax of 20 euros per ton of CO2 and a minimum energy tax on motor fuels and heating fuels. (Reuters).

A first-of-its kind study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that stalled energy projects are costing the New York economy $36.2 Billion and More Than 60,000 Jobs. (Progress Denied: A Study on the Potential Economic Impact of Permitting Challenges Facing Proposed Energy Projects).

Thanks to EPA’s new greenhouse gas permitting authority, a proposed Wisconsin biomass plant has come under fire from green activists. According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel report: It doesn’t make sense to issue a permit for the project because it would add emissions of carbon dioxide at a rate much higher than a natural gas-fueled power […]

Check out this galling interview of William Ruckelshaus, the EPA administrator who banned DDT. While Ruckelshaus is correct in criticizing Members of Congress for essentially being willfully uninformed on environmental issues, his criticism is astonishingly arrogant given his own willful (and genocidal) ignorance of facts. During 1971-1972, the EPA held seve […]

Don’t miss Peabody Energy exec Fred Palmer’s unapologetic interview with The Guardian (UK). Notable quotes include: “We’re 100% coal. More coal. Everywhere. All the time.” “We don’t have a political allegiance. We’re Americans and our political party is coal.” “Anyone who has the notion that we’re going to move away from fossil fuels just isn’t […] […]

Light bulb makers, in the form of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, will be testifying against a repeal of the 2007 federal light bulb law on March 10 before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The trade group and its member firms have been making their lobbying rounds on Capitol Hill this week. According […]

Democrat-run Oregon State University is apparently retaliating against climate skeptic and congressional candidate Dr. Art Robinson by taking action without cause against his three graduate student children. Robinson put together the petition against climate alarmism signed by 31,000+ U.S. scientists and unsuccessfully challenged Rep. Peter DeFazio in OR-4 l […]

At the Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference today, Sierra Club chief Carl Pope casually mentioned that the Sierra Club sits down with corporations having environmental regulatory problems and then uses its expertise in “changing public policy” to help the corporation solve its problem with the government — a novel role for a non-profit organization that […]

Activists love to talk about the hypothetical far-future “health risks” of a less-cold planet. They are not so keen to discuss the very real harms caused by their hysterical anti-carbon claims here and now. We at JunkScience.com are not so reticent. The immediate trigger for this is an article in the Adelaide Advertiser from South […]

At the annual Rentseekers Ball (aka the Wall Street Journal’s ECO:nomics Conference), Royal Dutch Shell gave attendees room-warming gifts — pedometers, with a note that was headlined “Take the First Step.” If they want us to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so much, why do they sell us gasoline?

At today’s House Energy and Power Subcommittee hearing on EPA’s job killing greenhouse gas regulations, Rep. Cory Power (R-CO) asked panel witness Dan Reicher — a longtime anti-nuke campaigner trying to position himself as some sort of “clean energy” expert — what could be done to accelerate the issuance of nuke plant permits. While Reicher […]

New Dehli’s experiment with “clean” natural gas turned out to be not so clean after all. A University of British Columbia study reports that, “A pioneering program by one of the world’s largest cities to switch its vehicle fleet to clean fuel has not significantly improved harmful vehicle emissions in more than 5,000 vehicles – […]

Arizona Public Service is proposing a rate package that includes “decoupling” — i.e.: If approved, that would allow APS to collect a certain amount of revenue per customer regardless of how much energy was sold. Such plans essentially allow a company to earn more money for selling less electricity. Wake up Arizona. Decoupling should be […]

By Steve Milloy March 1, 2011, Investor’s Business Daily It looks as though President Obama may have decided that getting re-elected in 2012 is more important than saving the planet from the much-dreaded global warming. But then how does he break it to the people who helped elect him and whose support he will need […]

The coincidence of: Sen. Sherrod Brown’s letter to Obama about EPA regs; Pew Center chief Eileen Claussen’s “prediction” in today’s Guardian about Obama; and Grist.org’s howling about the Brown letter, may be signs that Obama is preparing his base for the impending news that the EPA will be delaying implementation of its greenhouse gas regulations […] […]

The next step in saving the planet is clean cow technology. The Washington Post reports on a food additive being tested by DSM that interferes with rumen fermentation resulting in a 30% reduction in methane from burping. The byproduct may … Continue reading →

Sounds crazy that I would like a self-professed lesbian, atheist, severe leftist/socialist, but it’s like my affection for Christopher Hitchens–Paglia and the late Hitchens are or were eloquent and principled and both exposed hypocrisy of the left and its failings. … Continue reading →

In a required report, it looks like the US military looks at climate change. From Design&Change, US Military Reports To Congress On How Climate Change Will Affect Operations The oceans will be wet, sea levels will keep on rising like … Continue reading →

This is why Alexis de Toqueville is recognized as a great political commentator and analyst. He knew the seeds of destruction were planted and it would be hard to prevent the bad outcome. When majority politics allows the dreaded problem … Continue reading →

I am not prepared to think that Sci Fi theories about Hal type computers or SkyNet (Terminator) takeovers are in the realm of possibility. Self awareness is not understood and cannot be created, machines are machines, and current levels of … Continue reading →

I thought this essay extraordinary for the insight provided so efficiently. It reminds me of the many times people have commented that this website has no business talking about social sciences and politics, but I would challenge any thinking person … Continue reading →

A series of disturbing videos has brought this grisly practice to the forefront, even if it is nothing new. PhD chemist and theologian Stacy Trasancos dug into the scientific literature to discover some early references… Here’s one from 1972, entitled … Continue reading →

I liked this essay. Great info on the original hygrometer. If you read this you will know why ground fog develops and why temp/altitude/relative humidity are dynamic. William Gray, Roy Spencer and Willis Eschenbach (Willis is a regular here at … Continue reading →

I won’t tell you what I think about this essay–just that I decided people should read it and I am still figuring it out–Dalrymple always makes me think hard. http://www.newenglishreview.org/Theodore_Dalrymple/Hazards_of_Hazlitt/

You don’t need data, just say climate change and it seems logical. From NBC4, Climate Change Could be Culprit With Legionnaires’ Disease on the Rise An increase in cases in the Bronx and an increase since 2000 with the highest … Continue reading →

Steve Milloy put up this link in his remarkably energetic an helpful tweets. I don’t need to do much but put this up–it shows the problems–why the Bamster is killing this economy. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-six-year-slough-1438300451

I have a personal problem with the conduct AND POLITICAL STUPID OF an emergency physician elitist, John Kitzhaber–who was a LEFTIST CREEP and corrupt in his conduct, also a victim of his hormones and sex drive. He hooked up with … Continue reading →

High pH water is supposed to be healthier than just plain old water? From ACSH, Fact checking pHony water Getting enough water is important to health, the pH of the water isn’t likely to have much to do with how … Continue reading →

It may be that stimulation of the Amygdala causes a loss of respiratory drive, according to U of Iowa medical researchers. It is a case report on a rare condition. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-07/uoih-urs071515.php

I know something about the law and professional disciplinary processes–and Goodell has proven repeatedly that he is in the same league as that clownish State Prosecutor in the Baltimore matter. He allows politics and pressures from people with an axe … Continue reading →

I keep saying the recovery ain’t–in fact we are still in a long and troublesome recession, with unemployment well into the double digits and the work force declining. Sometimes a little story and some play on words and ideas helps … Continue reading →